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GREAT BARRINGTON, MA — Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, and Mary B. Marcy, provost and vice president of Simon's Rock College of Bard, announced today that Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education at Harvard University, will become the Bard Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow in July, 2007.

Based at Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Lagemann will collaborate with leadership and faculty in the Bard system, where she will develop programs on educational history and policy across the United States and around the world.

"I am pleased to welcome such an esteemed scholar and leader in her field," said Botstein. "Ellen Lagemann will join us at a time that is not only important in higher education in this country, but also represents a singular moment in secondary education, a time when education at every level is being challenged as never before." Marcy added, "It is especially fitting to have Lagemann becoming a part of the Bard community at Simon's Rock, in light of her long and close relationship with Elizabeth B. Hall, founder of Simon's Rock and head of Concord Academy, where Ellen was a student in the early 1960s." Marcy also noted that Lagemann currently serves as president of the Board of Trustees of Concord Academy, a graded 9-12 independent preparatory school in Concord, Massachussetts. Lagemann's interest in innovation in education – including the early college programs at Simon's Rock and Bard High School Early College – began early in her career, and her association with Elizabeth Hall helped to foster that interest.

"I am thrilled to have this opportunity to work with Leon Botstein, Mary Marcy, and their distinguished colleagues," Lagemann said. "I have long admired Leon's wide-ranging talent and Mary's outstanding skills as a leader, and I have watched Simon's Rock grow over the 40 years since it was a twinkle in Mrs. Hall's eye. I also greatly admire the wise and generous leadership that Emily H. Fisher has provided to Bard. It is a great honor to have this chance to return to this beautiful campus, to work with an outstanding faculty on urgent national problems that have preoccupied me throughout my career."

Lagemann is a former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former president of the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. A longtime faculty member of the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, where she was the founding chair of the Department of Humanities and the Social Sciences and director of the Center for the Study of American Culture and Education, Lagemann also taught at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she edited the Teachers College Record and was a member of the Columbia University Department of History. Lagemann has served as president of the National Academy of Education, now based at the National Research Council in Washington, D.C., and has been a member of many national boards and committees, including the Russell Sage Foundation and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. She is currently co-chair of the National Research Council's Committee on Teacher Preparation, and previously served on a number of other NRC committees.

She is the author or editor of nine books, including most recently, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. She began her career as a high school social studies teacher. Lagemann lives in Cambridge, Massachussetts and Ghent, New York, with her husband, Jonathan Kord Lagemann, an attorney. They are the parents of one son and have three grandchildren. While holding her appointment at Bard, Lagemann will be on leave from Harvard University, where she is Charles Warren Professor of the History of Education.